


The Taste Of Despair

by SwashbuckLore



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Could Be Canon, Dark, Depression, Despair, Grief/Mourning, HYDRA Trash Party, Hospitals, Hurt No Comfort, Hydra (Marvel), Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Military, Origin Story, Other, Pain, Physical Abuse, Sexual Assault, Shame, Suicide Attempt, Tags May Change, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Warnings May Change
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-03-18
Updated: 2019-03-18
Packaged: 2019-11-23 16:52:15
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,512
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18154511
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SwashbuckLore/pseuds/SwashbuckLore
Summary: ****Read the tags****Fending off despair, he trained control into himself, trained the kind of devotion that came from dark places and made him icy. He pushed his body to the point just millimeters before breaking. He didn’t regain hope; he was just here to die, he knew, but now he wanted to fight Death, wanted to spit in its face and tell it to screw itself before taking him.





	The Taste Of Despair

**Author's Note:**

> This is a very angsty fic. I was having angsty Rumlow feelings, the 8ball told me I probably wouldn't write today so I was feeling spiteful, and I've been getting nowhere on my fluffy or smutty content so. I gave in to the angst. I am one with the angst and the angst is one with me. 
> 
> I initially wanted to write an AU where he was ... Like, an okay dude. Different past, different choices, different guy. Sigh. This is what I did instead. It could be a rough read. Take care of yourselves. I tagged thoroughly I'm pretty sure. 
> 
> This is NOT happy, my dudes. 
> 
> But if you're into it, enjoy it :)

He was 19 and nobody when he learned the choking taste of despair.

He was 19 and everybody he loved was dead. There wasn’t a single fucker who gave a shit for him, and he downed the remaining pills from six of his mom’s prescription bottles before he vomited them all right back up. Crumpled on the hospital handicap restroom floor, the grimy tiles, under a sickly yellow fluorescent, Brock started to laugh. He laughed until he sobbed, biting deep into his forearm to stifle the sounds. He didn’t want the staff to hear him. He didn’t want questions or hugs or shit. He just. He just wanted something to go right, but apparently he could even screw up suicide. He laugh-sobbed for a while longer.

Nobody really gave a fuck, though. Brock looked through his mom’s shit, but it was her shit, and it burnt his fingers. He told the night shift nurse she could burn it if she wanted. The nurse looked at him with concern, her nose a little wrinkled. He had to reek like vomit, he realized, but he was so gray inside that he couldn’t even manage to flush with shame. He tells her he’s going to take a walk before he comes back to deal with paperwork and funerals and stuff.

It wasn’t fair, he thought as he snagged his backpack and moved out of the hospital aimlessly. But nobody had ever said it was fair, so. His college funds had gone to hospital bills. His rent money had gone to hospital bills. His inheritance would probably go to hospital bills, if it hadn’t already. He was homeless and penniless, and it really would have been more convenient for the world if he weren’t around.

He thought for a moment about which buildings with easy roof access are tall enough. He wasn’t really not sure. Where was the closest subway - a few blocks? Was there a bridge nearby? Probably. He hadn’t really slept in too long, and he didn’t have the change for another coffee. The hospital didn’t have any reason to give him free cups anymore. It wouldn’t matter in a few moments, hours, whatever.

He walked a few more blocks. It started to rain. He couldn't muster any sort of expression or sound. It was rain. He continued walking.

It was a combination of high school wrestling and the dangers of walking around a city between midnight and six a.m. that led him to back up in the hospital. If he’d given the muggers his backpack without resistance, they might not have have beaten him until he screamed. As it was, the cops got called. As he rode back to the hospital in an ambulance, medics flurrying over him, he wanted to laugh again because how in hell he was supposed to pay for all this - he had no idea. But laughing hurt. Everything hurt. He just closed his eyes and drank the despair until he was numb again.

\---

He was barely a week past 20 when he shipped to basic training. The despair sat hot in his chest as he ran and crawled and raged under the orders of men who’s job it was to despise him. He’d maybe earn enough to pay off the hospital bills before he was ninety. A cushy retirement wasn’t in his future, though. He felt it in his bones, heard it in the way that he didn’t have a five-year plan. There was just obedience and the military. There was just death. Might as well make it count for his country, right? Not that he’d let them know how he felt. Frowns all around for that sort of mentality in the military. He ate despair in his MREs, breathed it in the stink of sweat and blood and explosions, felt it in the aches and bruises that ran through his body, heard it in the backdrop of his nightmares, saw it howling in his gaze in the mirror.

It only lessened when he fought. He became a brutal hand-to-hand combatant after hundreds of sparring matches that end with him on the mat and his instructor smirking or outright laughing at him. They told him he was too hot, he was too emotional, he was just making it easy for them.

So, fending off despair, he trained control into himself, trained the kind of devotion that came from dark places and made him icy. He pushed his body to the point just millimeters before breaking. He didn’t regain hope; he was just here to die, he knew, but now he wanted to fight Death, wanted to spit in its face and tell it to fuck itself before taking him. A complete absence of hope, the neverending eclipse of despair, didn’t make him weak. It made him demanding.

He didn’t have time for laziness, for the bright-eyed who relied on some outer, upper force to fill the gaps they left open and sloppy. He didn’t have hope to limp on. He just had himself, and he grew hard. He still craved some measure of fairness, but the world wasn’t offering it so he had to become someone the world couldn’t ignore.

Sometimes, he was wild. Sometimes, he did things just to confirm he was alive, there was blood and not sand in his veins. Sometimes, he was numb and he didn’t smile for weeks. Mostly, he was the sort of guy that others wanted on missions, not trips to the bar. People didn’t get close to him. He knew everybody’s names, but they wouldn’t meet his eyes off-duty. Probably because the other guys switched off-duty, but he lived atop a gray plateau, or at the bottom of a very dark chasm. He didn’t have an off switch. Despair was his best friend, his lover, his family, his closest companion.

But his icy, harsh focus translated into efficiency, and he gained the respect that came from performance and experience. He was surrounded by men who were capable and intimidating and powerful, but he was ascending in a steady, savage path that the higher-ups noticed.

Sometimes they noticed so that they could utilize him. Sometimes they noticed so they could offer advice for improvement or praise. He appreciated the orders and the advice more than the praise.

Sometimes, they noticed so that one of them could find him alone, get him to do filthy things. He didn’t ever cry by choice, but tears were a damn automatic response for when he couldn’t breathe because there was a filthy dick so far down his throat he didn’t know if it’d come out, or when someone’d shoved what felt like their whole damn fist into his ass. The taste of semen was remarkably similar to the taste of despair, but he could swallow semen and not despair.

Some of them were brisk, doing what they wanted before leaving, and then he’d get a good mission or a slight promotion. Some of them were sadistic, and the words they left in him stung until his heart was almost exploding out of his chest post-workout. He scrubbed himself raw in the showers every time. The taste of despair had become thicker, joined by shame and fury and steely ambition. The world wasn’t fair. It wasn’t right. He was certain it would never become right when one of his higher-ups called him in.

“Hail HYDRA,” The officer whispered.

Brock stared at him. HYDRA? His brain pulled up a highschool history class after a few moments of searching. Captain Fucking America and Sunday cartoons. Brock was confused, not that his face would betray it.

“Oh.” The officer looked at him, obviously deliberating. “Really? Really? Nobody’s gotten to you. Huh. Look, Rumlow -” And the officer did a shitty job of explaining, alright, but he convinced Brock to stay until there’s a different man arrives. It's less of a choice and more of a survival instinct. The officer held a gun when he tried to walk out.

This new man, a stranger, spoke to a dusty part of Rumlow that called for peace, for fairness, for maybe even a motherfucking ghost of a shred of hope. He explained that the world wasn’t ever going to be fair until people like HYDRA made it so. He explained that peace came at the cost of sacrifice. For once, Brock imagined a world that was just. Where his family hadn’t died because the world they lived in was a shithole. A world that ran smoothly because it was ruled well.

Most importantly, the man promised that Brock’s life would mean something. He was going to die, yeah, but before that, he was going to matter. It wasn’t like the world would know his name specifically, but he would be part of an organization that would heal this fucked-up, flawed blue-and-green dot in the midst of the darkness between the stars.

Brock Rumlow was 26 when he took the offer the man gave without hesitation, and finally, the taste of despair eased in his throat as he whispered the words, "Hail HYDRA."


End file.
